May’s Top 10 Mostly-About-Marketing Must-Reads

Members of the Nectafy team have hand-selected these brilliant articles just for you—to spark your marketing fire. Plus, we’ve added our thoughts on how you can apply each article to your work in inbound marketing. We hope you find the advice in these “mostly-about-marketing” articles as helpful as we have! (Bonus: Check out #10 to see an article we’re all reading this month!)

I really appreciate this infographic because of the awareness it could bring to almost anyone regarding their day-to-day work. Are you a “project manager” operating under another job title? Take a look at these staggering statistics and see if you can identify. If so, you may want to research some project management basics to make sure you know what it means to effectively manage projects for your inbound marketing.

Engaging your readers with excellent content is at the heart of inbound—and this interesting Copyhackers post takes a deep dive into what is capturing the attention of readers today. It’s worth a read. (Plus, any writer who can tie in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to an article on best practices in copy writing is a winner in my book.)

It’s no secret that with today’s technology at our fingertips, maintaining a work-life balance is more difficult than ever—especially for millennials. But as a business owner, what can you do about it? For starters, follow the “3Ps” that this article suggests to promote a healthy environment for employees to thrive. I bet you’ll see a positive change in your company’s overall productivity and morale.

It takes a dedicated, intentional person to be an effective leader. It doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or an extrovert—you can learn how to coax the very best leader out of you and the very best out of your team. These are great ways to challenge yourself and improve your leadership, regardless of your personality type.

I love the way Sami starts this article. Before you can find and appreciate worthwhile marketing resources, you have to detox. By unsubscribing from the things you don’t find useful (present and future), you give your brain space to focus on what actually matters—absorbing helpful content.

The humble bulleted list probably doesn’t seem like much of a differentiator, which is why I enjoyed this article so much. Over time, testing and improving many small things—like bullet points—can be as powerful as making sweeping changes to copy. I’m eager to try this with our content.

Google is testing out a new structure for the “featured snippet.” This block, as Google describes it, “includes a summary of the answer, extracted from a webpage, plus a link to the page, the page title and URL.” If your site ranks for one of these, you used to get the snippet (and link) as well as a normal result on the first page—so really, you had two of the results on page one. As TheSEMPost explains, Google now seems to be removing the second result for some people. If they decide to go that way fully, you may see a decrease in click-through rate—something to keep an eye on.

If you’ve started writing on autopilot, it might be time to stop and take a look at this list. Are you consciously doing these things every time you write content? Number 12 is one I’d like to work on in particular. I’m also guilty of committing the infraction named in number 8! How about you?

“Most marketers wrongly assume they must produce a lot of original, quality content before they can build and monetize an email list,” Kononenko states. The real secret to building up a loyal email list is finding what content engages your readers and expanding on it. It’s called “content curation,” and it plays a big part in growing your list of subscribers.

In a world where technology and shallow tasks fight for your attention, it can seem like an uphill battle to try to get meaningful work done. This article provides valuable ways to zone in and find a deeper connection to your work.

What articles would you add to the list? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below or tweet us @nectafy.